<f:format.cropmaxCharacters="40">
A bolt of lightning is going to strike the clock tower
at precisely 10:04pm, next Saturday night.
</f:format.crop>

If the text is cropped strictly at 40 characters, the end of the string will be in the middle of the word “the”. But
the property 'respectWordBoundaries' is set by default, so the cropped text will read: